STRUGGLE
A MARXIST APPROACH TO AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND
Super-size My Pay
Mobilise to End Youth Rates and Demand $12 Minimum Now
In the face of widespread demands for an
end to age poverty, the Clark regime’s cob-
bled coalition has said it wants to raise the
minimum wage to $12.00 per hour by the
end of 2008 if ‘economic conditions per-
mit’. But 2008 is too late for low paid and
minimum wage workers - there is already a
low wage crisis despite recent growth in the
economy and record corporate profits.
The Unite union reports that tens of thou-
sands of workers live on the current mini-
mum wage of $9.50 an hour for those 18
and older and $7.60 an hour for 16 and 17
year olds. There is no minimum wage for
those 15 and under.
Compare that to Australia where the mini-
mum wage is $NZ13.85, nearly 50% higher
than in New Zealand. The irony of all
the National Party’s electoral claims about
disparity with Australian wage rates is that
the wage growth in Australia came about
because of Federal Wage orders for the
lowest paid workers - higher paid workers
got wage increases to maintain relativities.
Yet these are exactly the policies that John
Key is now attacking as damaging to the
economy.
According to the SuperSizeMyPay.com
campaign site: Despite once having one
of the highest standards of living in OECD
countries, New Zealand now has one of the
highest rates of low pay, child poverty and
income inequality
• Real wages dropped in New Zealand
by 6.5% between 1980-2001 whilst
Air NZ Dispute . . . . . . . . .
Muslims and Communists .
Being Pakeha . . . . . . . . . .
Danish Protests . . . . . . . .
Marxism and Labour . . . . .
STRUGGLE : March 2006
No: 120 : $1.50 : March 2006
they rose by 28.8% in Australia, 39.5%
in Canada, 46.9% in UK and 68.2%
Finland.
• During the same two decades corporate
profits went from 34% of GDP to 46%.
Wages as a share of GDP fell from 57%
42%.
• Australian average wages are 30% high-
er than NZ now when they were the
same as NZ twenty years ago
Poverty-wages are increasing the gap
between rich and poor and increasing other
social inequalities. The majority of low paid
and minimum wage workers are women,
Maori, pacific nation peoples, disabled,
youth, students and new migrants.
WORKING FOR FAMILIES IS
NOT THE ANSWER
The Government has recognised that the
wages for many are too low. It solution is to
provide taxpayer-funded top-ups for wages system for the large foreign and local corpo-
to people with families through its working rations. They are the major beneficiaries of
for families package. This is no more than a a scheme that crudely shackles wage earners
subsidy to business, allowing it to pay wages to a business friendly state.
that are not acceptible if it was all that the
worker got. In effect the Government is LOW PAY =
picking up a chunk of the wage bill - but LOW PRODUCTIVITY
only for some workers. Those with families Any delay in increasing the minimum wage
get top-ups, others get nothing. sends the message that New Zealand coun-
try can continue to be a low-wage low-pro-
Working for Families de-couples income ductivity country. We cannot. Low wages
from work the impact being that the general produces a whole lot of low-paying jobs,
taxpayers replace part of the wages paid by with little incentive to look at increasing pro-
the employer. In effect, Working for Families ductivity per worker, either through training
is a state– controlled and managed welfare continues overleaf...
INSIDE: STRUGGLE ON...
. .2 New Mao Biography . . . . . . 12
. .3 New Orleans . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
. .6 NGOs in Russia. . . . . . . . . . 16
. .8 Philippines Update . . . . . . . 18
. 10 Rewi Alley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1
EDITORIAL
Air NZ Workers: Now the Fight is On!
Workers have sensibly rejected a union-
collaborative effort to slash their jobs,
wages and conditions – now they need to
make the fight a political one and throw
off the yoke of their class collaborationist
union bosses.
Rather than confront the Government
(which owns 82% of the company) over
Air NZ plans to shut-down its heavy engi-
neering aircraft repair operations, unions
turned to an anti-union accounting firm to
come up with a cost-saving scheme at the
expense of workers’ conditions.
TheEngineering,PrintingandManufacturing
Union (EPMU) and the Aviation and
Marine Engineers Association (AMEA)
put up a plan that would save only half of
the 600 jobs that would be lost if the engi-
neering work was outsourced off-shore.
Not only would more than 300 jobs disap-
pear, the workers who remain would have
to take a major wage cut and yet still be
expected to do the same or even more
work.
Instead of making concessions, the unions
should be waging a campaign to force the
Government, to take full control of the
airline and ensure the engineering repair
facilities are kept open. Yet instead of tak-
ing this fight to the Government – led by
the Labour party that the EPMU spent
hundreds of thousands of members dues
helping to get elected - the union wants its
own members to pay even more, through
their own labour, towards Air NZ’s mas-
sive profits.
We agree with Alliance Party co-leader
Len Richards who says the unions ‘buck-
led under to the blackmail of the compa-
ny’. Air New Zealand is cynically using the
threat of a complete closure of the repair
workshops to extract ‘voluntary’ conces-
sions from the workers.
Instead of fighting, the unions hired
Michael Stiassny of the accountancy firm
Ferrier Hodgson who has come up with a
plan that will mean far-reaching changes in
work conditions in the hope that enough
money can be saved to convince the com-
pany to save 300 engineers’ jobs.
Stiassny is no workers’ champion. He
specialises in company restructuring and
insolvency. He chairs the Board of the lines
company Vector and Auckland’s corporat-
ised water company, Metrowater. He also
holds directorships in a number of other
companies including Metlifecare, a major
2 March 2006 : STRUGGLE
player in the aged care industry currently
under attack in a corporate takeover bid
by the Australian McQuarrie Bank.
Stiassny told the NZ Herald it was “phe-
nomenal” and an “amazing surprise”, to
see “how far the [union] delegates and
members have moved on labour reform”.
It is “unusual”, he crowed, “to see a union
make those ... deliverables” and Air NZ
should take advantage of these conces-
sions. This has been the rhetoric domi-
nating the media – followed by cries of
outrage that ‘a small group’ of workers
have now shafted the deal by refusing to
take cuts to their hard-fought-for wages
and conditions.
Andrew Little, the national secretary of
the EPMU, has embraced the account-
ants’ anti-worker plan. He sees it as ‘a
viable alternative’, but in selling workers’
conditions in return for an unenforceable
undertaking that some jobs will be saved,
Little and the unions are playing right into
the company’s hands.
Only a few days before the presentation
of the union concessions to Air NZ, the
company said that even a 25 per cent cut
in labour costs for the engineers would not
be enough to save their jobs. Air NZ said
COVER STORY CONT.
or investment. As the CPA minimum pro-
gramme published for the election pointed
out: the only way to increase productivity
is to force it on employers, and wean them
off their dependence on low wages by
requiring wage increases in advance of infla-
tion. Even Treasury has noted that because
workers are cheaper in New Zealand than
Australia, New Zealand bosses under-invest
in capital and lower productivity results.
Even the rabidly capitalist flag-waving
Dominion Post accepts there is no place for
youth rates. ‘No one would argue’, it wrote
at the beginning of February, ‘that women
should be paid less than men for doing the
same job, and it is equally absurd to accept
that a 16-year-old should get less than a 19-
year-old just because of his birth date’.
Raising the minimum wage to $12 imme-
diately, removing youth rates, giving secure
hours and other minimum entitlements
would be a first step towards reclaiming
the entitlements workers lost under the
Employment Contracts Act and challenging
the poverty and inequality capitalist control
imposes on working class New Zealanders.
Building a community-wide solidarity cam-
only across-the-board concessions from all
2100 engineering workers could see some
of the heavy engineering jobs saved. Air
NZ management said even changes in
shift patterns, removal of penal rates and
an ‘hours bank’ to manage the work load
would not be cheaper than outsourcing.
Air NZ is going to outsource all the jobs it
wanted to in the first place, and is seeking
‘savings’ (read increase exploitation and
extraction of surplus value) from those
who remain – with no jobs saved at all.
The loss of our country’s heavy aircraft
repair capacity would be a major blow
to our strategically important transport
infrastructure. The Labour-led government
must be forced to act in the interests of the
people who elected it and protect the 600
jobs at risk while ensuring New Zealand
continues to have a viable national airline.
NATIONALISE AIR NEW ZEALAND
NOW! WORKERS, THROW-OFF
THE SHACKLES OF YOUR UNION
BOSSES! THESE WORKSHOPS ARE
ASSETS OWNED BY THE PEOPLE OF
NEW ZEALAND. OCCUPY TO KEEP
THEM OURS!
paign around the fast food industry can
help these workers win a contract for these
demands. It will also build the confidence
of low paid and minimum wage workers
and be a first step toward winning $12 mini-
mum wage for all New Zealanders.
As Communists we must build the united
front against the ruling regime at local and
national levels. We must win over tactical
allies. The Communist Party seeks to form
alliances that would lead to more favorable
conditions for the revolutionary movement
and advance the interests of the broad
masses of the people
As the people of Aotearoa increasingly
mobilize, the Communist Party conducts
propaganda to make them aware that
fundamental changes in society will only
be achieved with the complete victory of
the socialist peoples revolution that will
overthrow the entire reactionary and pup-
pet state and system and establish a genuine
revolutionary government and system. All
throughout this process, the people must
continuously wield the weapon of militant
struggle. They must broadly and actively
immerse themselves in economic, political
and social issues.

Imperialism is the
Enemy: for Muslims
and Communists
ISLAMOPHOBIA: A WEAPON
OF DIVISION
Islamophobia is a relatively recent devel-
opment. It first surfaced as a concept in
the midst of the Iranian revolution, when
Islam emerged as a potent force against
imperialism. It was used then by the im-
perialists to condemn the actions of the
Iranian people in their 1979 revolution
against the US controlled Shah Monar-
chy. It surfaced alongside such wonderful
and ‘helpful’ (for imperialism) concepts
as ‘Islamic-Fundamentalism’ and like the
latter, rose into common currency in the
imperialist world following the events of
September 2001.
All progressive people, including people
involved in the anti-war movement, and
especially people who consider them-
selves revolutionaries or Marxists, should
be clear about these bigoted sentiments
and concepts. They serve only as instru-
ments of division amongst working and
oppressed people, and they are not at all
helpful in approaching and confronting
the very real problems that political Islam
confronts us with as a dominant political
tendency in the Middle East, the Malayan
archipelago, and other oppressed regions
in the world.
PROTESTS AGAINST CAR-
TOONS?
According to the CIA Factbook there are
currently around 1.6 billion Muslims in
the world. The average income in Mus-
lim countries is $1,000 a year, a fifth of
that for the rest of the world. In nineteen
of the Organisation of the Islamic Con-
ference’s (OIC) 57 member countries,
half of the adult population is illiterate.
By all accounts, the protests against the
cartoons humiliating and ridiculing the
Prophet Mohammad have been most
enthusiastic and militant in those nations
that have been crushed most brutally
under the boot of imperialism. Palestine,
STRUGGLE : March 2006
Afghanistan. two of the poorest nations
in the world, two of those most brutal-
ized by imperialist war and occupation
and the staging grounds of some of the
biggest and strongest condemnations of
the comics.
Why the comics? Why, if they are so bru-
talized by imperialism, are there not mass
protests against imperialism in the streets
of Kabul and Jerusalem? Are the pro-
tests simply being manipulated by local
demagogues; steering the angers of the
oppressed masses back under their cloaks
of the opium of the people?
Clearly some reactionary regimes are us-
ing the cartoon episode to rally the mass-
es under their flags and corral them safely
in their mosques, but the important dy-
namics of this struggle reveals that even
this offers us a way forward against impe-
rialism. These protests are an expression
of a mass anti-imperialist sentiment. A
stunted, limited, deformed and perhaps
mostly unconscious anti-imperialist senti-
ment - yes. but an anti-imperialist senti-
ment all the same. If we fail to see this
then we miss the most important subjec-
tive factor of the struggle of oppressed
people in the Middle East.
ANALYSIS
Within the overall attacks on the people
of the Middle East there are a number of
components:
1. Military attacks (Which have been the
subject of news reports and antiwar
demonstrations for years now.)
2. Economic attacks (Implemented
through neo-colonial puppet govern-
ments and manipulation by the World
Bank and IMF for years before the
current era of war and occupation,
and since the occupations through
neo-Liberal privatization plots to steal
the wealth of the lands that have
been pounded with thousand pound
bombs.)
3. Political attacks (Part and parcel of the
first and second sorts of attacks, but
also used in the build-up and political
preparation for the first and second
sorts of attacks, as currently notable
in the political attacks on Iran, Ven-
ezuela, and Cuba by the US, EU and
the whole cabal of imperialism.)
4. Cultural attacks (People in Aotearoa
should be familiar with these sorts of
attacks as these have been the prima-
ry weapon used against Maori for the
last hundred and fifty years or so).
The racist and imperialist cartoons of the
Prophet Mohammad are a cultural at-
tack on Muslim people. A people who
have been stolen from, killed, tortured,
starved, bombed, and occupied. What
does the poor Afghan have left but the
dignity of being Afghan and the moral
strength of being a child of Mohammad?
Standing on this last hope, the Afghan,
the Palestinian, the Iraqi, stands in de-
fense of their Prophet.
“FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” THE
“WAR ON TERROR,” AND US
VS. THEM
We have have faced an hysterical argu-
ment in every corner of the bourgeois
3
ANALYSIS
media since the protests first surfaced:
“Freedom of speech!” they cry. You
would think that there was such a thing.
Prominent pro-war ideologue, Christo-
pher Hitchens screams about “[The] in-
ternational Muslim pogrom against the
free press” while he wraps himself in the
pages of the Washington Post-Newsweek
corporation. “Dissident” (in the style of
the Cuban “dissidents”) Muslim Irshad
Manji lectures from her podium on Fox
News, flanked by Bill O’Reilly. “Let the
cartoons fly,” she proclaims. in the name
of “Free Speech.”
Karl Marx famously wrote that the gov-
erning ideas of any epoch are the ideas
of the ruling class. Of course, “freedom
of speech” - our hallowed right - exists
also within that framework. In practice,
this “freedom” is as hollow as any others
under bourgeois “democracy” and rests
upon the most fragile of foundations: the
relative stability of capitalism.
History has already measured the shock-
ingly low melting point of the right of
“Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of
Expression”. When the bourgeoisie’s con-
trol over the working class is shaken, it
considers its social contract (constitution)
and all its subjects’ democratic rights
void. Perhaps our liberal journalists think
that something has qualitatively changed
since the press of the Peoples Voice was
smashed by the police in 1939 (and the
editors gaoled), or since the attacks on
those supporting the watersiders in 1951,
or the agent provocateurs during the
Springbok Tours, the wire tapping against
Maori organisations, the spies invading
Aziz Chaudrey’s house...
On February 8th, George Bush joined
Jack Straw in “condemning” the cartoons,
since... the US believes in “tolerance,” but
he said, “we reject violence as a way to
express discontent with what may be
printed in a free press.” And then Con-
doleezza Rice added, “Iran and Syria have
gone out of their way to inflame senti-
Marxist-Leninist Literature Available:
Books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong.
Full catalogue available, Write to:
Books, PO Box 6724, Wellington.
4 March 2006 : STRUGGLE
ments and to use this to their own pur-
poses. And the world ought to call them
on it.”
Or, as Ephraim Zuroff, Director of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jeru-
salem, clarified for us “[The violent rallies
are] the typical Islamic response to any-
thing that they perceive as an insult or a
threat.”
In an article published February 6th, Rob-
ert Fisk wrote about the selective char-
acter of freedom of speech, “In other
words, while we claim that Muslims must
be good secularists when it comes to free
speech--or cheap cartoons--we can worry
about adherents to our own precious
religion just as much. I also enjoyed the
pompous claims of European statesmen
that they cannot control free speech or
newspapers. This is also nonsense. Had
that cartoon of the Prophet shown in-
stead a chief rabbi with a bomb-shaped
hat, we would have had “anti-Semitism”
screamed into our ears--and rightly so--
just as we often hear the Israelis complain
about anti-Semitic cartoons in Egyptian
newspapers.”
“But if we must write the truth!” the sage
replies. “We must not discriminate!”
The truth? There is no space in the bour-
geois media for the truth. The voices of
the majority of the people of the world
are expelled from the newspapers and
television and radio stations of the world
because our voices reflect our interests,
and the “Truth” is created by the great lie-
factories owned and operated by those
with interests that irreconcilably contra-
dict the interests of us regular folk. That
is the truth. The truth is that the world
is being ravaged by the dying forces of
imperialism - and Hegel was right. there is
only one truth. Dominance over the big-
T-official-”Truth” and suppression of the
Hegel’s truth is what led the US to ban-
ish al-Jazeera from Iraq and replace them
with “al- Huda” (which coincidentally, or
ironically, translates into “The One”, as in
Hegel’s “One Truth”), a media corpora-
tion operated out of the US with Donald
Rumsfeld as executive director. Control
of the “Truth” is a reflection of the bal-
ance of power in the world, and delivery
of this power is the job of our “Freedom
of Speech” loving liberal journalists.
It is a further _expression of the balance of
forces in the world today that our “Free-
dom of Speech” loving friends’ horror at
the exercise of the freedom of _expres-
sion of oppressed people (the protests) is
what compels their “principled” defense
of “Freedom of Speech” for imperialism
and its newspapers. These producers and
translators of the governing ideology of
the imperialist war machine reach out to
oppressed people with their pens only
to cut out our tongues, and with their
papers only to suffocate us beneath the
sheer mass of their “popular opinion.”
When the house sets the rules, the house
always wins. That is why it is so impor-
tant that we carry on our fight outside of
the house, lobbing in attacks through the
windows the same way Afghans attacked
the Danish embassy this week. Bour-
geois control of the media means that we
have made and must make our own. It
also means that freedom of _expression
for oppressed people comes in different
forms than imperialist freedom of _ex-
pression. They distribute racist cartoons
by the hundreds of millions of drafts and
defend their wars and occupations over
billions of dollars of airwaves. We are left
with the hard work of hand distributing
fliers and newspapers and organizing
street demonstrations, strikes and ac-
tions. In turn, they attack us for our crude
methods; and in turn we must escalate
our effective use of our crude methods.
WHY THE “TRUTH” MATTERS
The anti-Mohammad cartoons are a strike
against Muslims as oppressed people - it
is impossible to understand the reaction
to the comics without this understand-

ing. Muslims are no strangers to insults
and humiliation, and these are not the
first comics to attack them as oppressed
people. But on top of the racism, bombs,
guns, tanks, ridicule, slander, occupation,
theft, and daily humiliation at the hands
of imperialism comes these comics - the
worst and most extreme anti-Islam car-
toons ever published - a blow at the pride
of every Muslim individually, and at Mus-
lims as a whole community. Do you want
to see what the collective frustration and
anger of 1.6 billion people looks like?
These cartoons are an instrument of di-
vision, calculated to drive a wedge into
the Muslim world - between the fictitious
“Good Muslim” / “Bad Muslim.” The “ex-
tremist” and the “moderate.” The depths
of imperialist scheming is to be found
here. For the aim of dividing Muslims
into “Good” and “Bad” is not even for
Muslims themselves. It is not possible to
convince a man whose nephew was shot
by a US soldier that his brother is a “Bad”
Muslim for planting a roadside bomb. He
is not a “terrorist” or an “extremist” - he is
a human being.
The target audience of the “Good” Mus-
lim / “Bad” Muslim portrait is working
and oppressed people who are not Mus-
lim. Imperialists are pulling hard to di-
vide the oppressed people of the “West”
from oppressed people of the “East.”
The cartoon is not only a reflection of Is-
lamophobia, it means to enflame Islamo-
phobia, just as the coverage of the anti-
cartoon protests and all the heroic “Free
Speech” talk means to do. The “Good”
Muslim, of course, is one that accepts
and supports the imperialist domination
of the Middle East, keeps their “personal
preferences” (like Allah) confined to their
home, thinks that there’s a “time and a
place” and “peaceful, legal channels” for
protest, learns English and aims to “start
a business” someday. The “Bad” Muslim
is anyone who looks like they might be
from the Middle East and fights for the
rights, lives and dignity of oppressed peo-
ple against imperialism. Probably they’re
angry. Best to stay away from people like
that. Right?
As the imperialist crisis of controlling its
“conquests” continues and grows, this im-
perialist agenda of division take a more
and more important strategic role. Nearly
three years of occupation in Iraq and
four and a half years in Afghanistan have
brought only suffering to the people of
these occupied nations and a series of
greater or lesser quagmires for imperial-
ism. Just when the imperialists had hoped
that they had gained some ground in the
demoralization of the Palestinian libera-
STRUGGLE : March 2006
tion movement, Hamas was democrati-
cally elected to control of the PA. This
sign of shifting dynamics in this struggle
indicates the resolution of the majority of
Palestinians to continue their liberation
struggle in resolute opposition to impe-
rialism.
Along with the quagmire of occupation
has come a growing awareness of the
injustice of these occupations amongst
working, poor and oppressed people
within imperialist countries themselves.
And from this awareness comes a grow-
ing opposition and the threat of an effec-
tive opposition. The question rises from
the sinking sands of Iraq and Afghanistan
and finds voice on the lips of millions
gathered around the water coolers and
lunch rooms in every imperialist country.
With this trick of slander, racism, and Is-
lamophobia the imperialists hope to trig-
ger deep fear, resentment, and animosity
against Muslims in the minds and hearts
of the working class in the imperialist
countries. Overnight, all their mediums
of delivery are armed to deliver their
payload all at once. The doctor’s needles
pierce us as CNN, TVNZ, TV3, the Do-
minion Post and the Christchurch Press
shoot to hit us with a heavy enough dose
of racism and Islamophobia to reverse
the course of the anti-war consciousness
that threatens to grow like a magnificent
rainbow across the whole spectrum of
the working class. All at once, they hope,
the people who yesterday were asking
questions about the war will be asking
instead, “All this over a cartoon? Those
Muslims are crazy.”
Islamophobia plays a deeply reactionary
role. If imperialist propaganda is able to
convince revolutionaries in Latin Ameri-
ca, “Look. Iraq, Afghanistan, this is a Mus-
lim problem, it’s not worth your trouble.”
then the anti-occupation fighters in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Palestine will be aban-
doned to their existing and inadequate
leaderships - sheltered from the potential
experience, influence, sympathy and soli-
darity of the revolutionary movements in
Latin America.
ISLAM AND ANTI-
IMPERIALISM
Wherever Islam is fighting against imperi-
alism, it is a progressive force - and while
this is one of our problems, it is not our
greatest problem. Wherever Islam is fight-
ing against imperialism, ‘The Left’ must
join with Muslims in this fight. The alter-
native is to abstain from the fight against
imperialism and in the best case scenario;
this abstention would result in the victory
of Islam. and the worst case? The victory
ANALYSIS
of imperialism.
The potentials for mobilizing the Muslim
community as part of the working and
oppressed class in Aotearoa against im-
perialism will be seen through a strong
unity in action between Muslims and the
anti-war movement. Islamophobia cuts an
unbridgeable chasm between “The Left”
or the anti-war movement and this im-
portant community. If the anti-war move-
ment is so paralyzed with Islamophobia
that it is not able to outreach and work
together with the Muslim community lo-
cally, then how can it expect to work in
an international context with the strong-
est anti-war/anti-occupation forces in the
world?
On the specific question of the Islamo-
phobic cartoons, the anti-war movement,
and all progressive, working class and
“Leftist” forces has a special obligation
to help to turn the shame and fear that
many Muslims are undoubtedly feeling
into an experience that they can gain
confidence from. We are not be in the
business of refusing support to sections
of the working and oppressed classes
against imperialism. To the contrary, we
need to follow the examples set by Fidel
and Chavez and turn towards the Mus-
lim community with renewed and active
solidarity, support their righteous rage
against the Islamophobic cartoons racist
attack, and defend them - as oppressed
people - against imperialism and capital-
ism, the shared enemy of all oppressed
people. If we refuse this duty, then we
will be abandoning our historical post as
the champions of the oppressed and, re-
peating the gravest sectarian and oppor-
tunist mistakes of the Left in history.
Islamophobia is a tool of division between
workers and it has no place in the ‘Left’.
For the unity of the oppressed people of
the world against the oppressor.
Take a clear line against Islamophobia,
and a clear line in defense of oppressed
people against imperialism.
History’s penalties for those who do oth-
erwise will be insurmountable.
5
FEATURE
Being Pakeha Now
(in 2006)
Contributed.
In the census to be conducted in a few
weeks time Pakeha New Zealanders
are again to be denied the opportunity
to declare that identity and in doing
so assert our claim for our desire to
be part of a decolonised Aotearoa. It
is the political nature of the ‘Pakeha’
identifier that has led to its exclusion
from the last two censuses, despite its
inclusion before then, and regardless
of a NZ Herald/Digipoll survey (of
over 7500 respondents) in 2001 in
which 49% of those surveyed referred
to themselves as Pakeha. In fact, in
the census this year, as an attempt to
promote an alternative, racist, identity
amongst non-Maori, Pakeha are to be
encouraged to think of themselves as
‘kiwi’ despite that being the name of a
flightless bird.
In contrast to Pakeha, ‘Kiwi’ is reflec-
tive and representative of the Brash-
like claim that ‘we are all one people’
and that there is some transposed Eu-
ropean-ness that has somehow taken
root in New Zealand without anything
more than token reference to Maori.
‘European’ makes no sense to those
millions of New Zealanders who have
never been to Europe, or those who
have but found it a completely alien
space, and there has been a develop-
ing move from the settler-state to de-
velop an alternative. ‘Kiwi’ allows a
local-sounding alternative with none
of the political statement contained in
white New Zealanders defining them-
selves in relation to Maori - to be Pa-
keha means to understand that Maori
are the first New Zealanders, that
Maori have rights associated with that
‘firts-ness’ (indigeneity) and stands in
opposition to the colonial-settler-state;
in looking towards a decolonised and
better future.
It is this latter branch to the Pakeha
identity that the state is seeking to
head off. First, through the census it is
denying the identifier. After struggle by
decolonisation activists, ‘Pakeha’ was
added to the census questionnaire in
1996 but removed in 2001. In 2001
Pakeha who ticked an ‘other’ box and
6 March 2006 : STRUGGLE
write in ‘Pakeha’ were recorded and
reported as having said they were ‘Eu-
ropean’. Although the 2006 census
will not have a ‘Kiwi’ box to tick the
statisticians have announced that they
will separately report those who write
‘kiwi’ or ‘New Zealander’ in the other
category - although will continue to
refuse to publish the number of those
anti-colonials who identify as ‘Pakeha’.
PAKEHA AND
DECOLONISATION
As te Tiriti activist Mike Smith says:
‘not all non-Maori are Pakeha, there
are some tests to be passed’. For him
‘Pakeha are those kids who grew up
down the street, whom we played rug-
by with, who chased our sisters... or if
they were girls we chased them. Pake-
ha are those people who speak a sort
of pidgen language comprised of Eng-
lish and Maori words, and who have
acceptance in the Maori community.
As Joce Brown wrote nearly twenty
years ago in the Republican magazine
‘the settler population can really be
seen in two ways. We are agents of
colonialism, the people who imposed
colonialism on the Maori, but also its
victims. For as we develop a sense of
belonging to this country and a desire
to be independent from the colonial
base, we are temporarily a people with-
out a definite identity’. Pakeha then is
a term that defines people who are
here and in the process of rejecting the
colonial baggage that went with being
European. As Ranganui Walker put it
‘Use of the word Pakeha is part of the
process by which the descendents of
European colonialists achieve a New
Zealand identity’. Leaving unsaid the
obvious corollary: not identifying as
Pakeha means being trapped in some
other heritage, in particular continuing
to have the baggage of a colonial men-
tality towards Maori.
NOT INDIGENOUS
While to be Pakeha means belong-
ing in New Zealand and longing for
its decolonisation, it does not mean
to be indigenous. For if Pakeha are to
be indigenous then we are to be cut
off from our history as the descend-
ants and inheritors of the privileges of
the colonisers of Aotearoa. We are not
‘born again’ New Zealanders, disown-
ing our parents and imagining our-
selves adopted . . .
In the context where we are encour-
aged to be either a tranplanted Euro-
pean culture or an ‘indigenous’ culture
without a colonial past, it’s little won-
der that Pakeha New Zealand struggles
with the question of identity, seeking
to create cultural icons of gumboots,
black singlets, pavlova, kiwifruit and
the buzzy bee toy. Ane Mikaere noted
in the 2003 Bruce Jesson lecture that
when travelling overseas, white New
Zealanders leap forward to perform
bastardised versions of the haka and
“Pökarekare Ana”, and adorn them-
selves with Maori pendants in an at-
tempt to identify themselves as New
Zealanders: when in Aotearoa it is of-
ten those same people who decry any
assertion of Maori language and cul-
ture as a threat to their identity. Their
cultural insecurity appears to know no
bounds.
Bruce Jesson saw a connection be-
tween these shaky cultural foundations
and the status of coloniser:
‘New Zealand had such a shallow cul-
ture’, he wrote, ‘that most New Zea-
landers knew little about their coun-
try’s history. Amnesia is not a recent
development, but is part of the colonial
condition.’
Such sentiments reveal the sizable bur-
den of guilt that many Pakeha carry
about the means by which they have
come to occupy their present position
of power and privilege.
PAKEHA IS NOT MAORI
To be Pakeha is not a desire to be
Maori. An engagement with Maori only
makes one even more self-conscious
of cultural difference. Yet the only way
of understanding what it means to be
Pakeha in New Zealand is in dialogue
with Maori. And it is only through un-
derstanding who we are that we can
start to understand the cultural proc-
esses in New Zealand that we are part
of.

Pakeha are the products of an invading
culture. Brash can bluster all he likes
about the limits to which he can be
made to apologise for the sins of his
ancestors; Mallard can appeal to Maori
to trust him; Michael King can insist
that the colonisers did not simply take
without giving anything in return; these
claims mask a sense of underlying un-
ease, of unresolved guilt pervades their
words. Beneath the colonial surface
is guilt, guilt which manifests itself as
denial, self-justification, defensiveness
and, incredibly enough, a sense of vic-
timhood.
WHICH WAY FORWARD?
The prospect of being forever locked
into the roles of oppressor and op-
pressed must surely be as unfulfilling
for non-Maori as it is frustrating for
Maori. The foreshore debacle has pro-
vided a timely reminder of the ease
with which the Crown slips into its
time-honoured pattern of threats and
coercion, taking for the colonial-state
yet again to the role of oppressor. It’s
not a role that Pakeha relish and no
Pakeha need to wallow in guilt. All of
us, Maori and Pakeha hope for a better
world for our children and grandchil-
dren. If the key to creating that bet-
ter world does not lie in forgetting our
past, where does it lie?
For Maori partly it is about process.
It is never possible for manuhiri or
manene to take upon themselves the
status of tangata whenua. An outsider
may be incorporated into the tangata
whenua group, be allocated land and
other rights and may even have their
place within the community cement-
ed by marriage and children. But ulti-
mately, it is for the tangata whenua to
determine the way in which they view
the outsider in their midst.
Crucial to the acceptance of manene
or manuhiri in the domain of an iwi or
hapü is their compliance with the tikan-
ga of the tangata whenua: the outsider
is granted such status and rights as the
tangata whenua determine. Central
to the resolution of a wrong-doing is
the commitment of the wrong-doer1s
whanau to submit themselves to the
measures taken against them by the
wronged party.
For Pakeha to gain legitimacy here, we
must place our trust in Maori, not the
other way around. They must accept
that it is for the tangata whenua to de-
termine their status in this land, and
to do so in accordance with tikanga
Maori. This will involve sorting out a
STRUGGLE : March 2006
process of negotiation which is driven
by the principles underpinning tikanga,
a process which Pakeha do not control.
There is no doubt that many - even
those who oppose the colonial project
and identify as Pakeha - will find this
challenging. Giving up such control
requires a leap of faith, yet nothing
less will suffice if we want to gain a
genuine sense of belonging, the sense
of identity that until now has proven
so elusive.
In 1986 Ray Nairn wrote of the need
to get Pakeha to “name the fears they
have about relinquishing control”, and
looked to a time “when we can come
as two peoples: Maori and Pakeha, tan-
gata whenua and manuhiri, to negoti-
ate a basis for our society”. Of course,
there are Pakeha individuals who have
discovered that the sky does not fall if
they negotiate their personal relation-
ships with Maori on such a basis. While
that in itself is cause for optimism, do
not to settle for building positive re-
lationships with Maori on a personal
level only. Use those experiences con-
structively, and bring about the mind-
shift required amongst settler society
as a whole - from coloniser to Pakeha
and from their to post-coloniality.
Perhaps it is Mike Grimshaw who best
addressed the question of Pakeha iden-
tity when earlier this year he observed:
“I am a Pakeha because I live in a Maori
country”. When you think about it,
there is nowhere else in the world that
one can be Pakeha. Whether the term
remains forever linked to the shameful
role of oppressor or whether it can be-
come a positive source of identity and
FEATURE
pride is up to those who take up the
moniker ‘Pakeha’. All that is required
is a leap of faith.
FROM THE PROGRAMME
OF THE CPA
The struggle for self-determination
by Maori is a struggle for democratic
rights denied by capitalism, and which
shakes it to the core because settler
capitalism in Aotearoa is based on sto-
len land. We must demand full redress
and reparation for all grievances stem-
ming from unjust acts committed by
the government, and the right to sov-
ereignty and nationhood on the basis
of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Dec-
laration of Independence.
The Maori struggle for self-determina-
tion can develop as a mass struggle for
power only if collaborationist tribal
leaders are isolated and defeated. We
must establish new democratic politi-
cal, economic, social and cultural insti-
tutions to strengthen the fighting abil-
ity of the movement.
We must strengthen the strategic al-
liance by winning support amongst
workers for the equal social, cultural
and educational rights for Maori in all
areas and fighting against white chau-
vinism in all its forms.
The Communist Party must expand
vigorously among Maori to ensure the
tasks of uniting and leading the move-
ments of their people and of opposing
narrow interests are carried out.
7
STATEMENT
Denmark Has Lost
Its Innocence
Excerpted from a statement released
by Sven Tarp, International Relations
Secretary, Communist Party of Denmark
Marxist-Leninist
“Something is rotten in the state of
Denmark,” Shakespeare wrote in his
famous Hamlet some four centuries
ago. The events that have taken place
during the last weeks and months show
that Shakespeare’s words have gained
new actuality. We who live in Denmark
can confirm that everything is not as it
ought to be.
According to the modern myth already
created, it all started in my home town,
the city of Aarhus, on September 30 last
year when the national newspaper with
regional name, Jyllands Posten (The Jut-
land Post), published 12 cartoons that
presented an offensive, stereotypical
image of Mohammed.
The official reason for printing the car-
toons was, according to the editor-in-
chief, to challenge the way freedom
of speech is practised in Denmark as
it is allegedly being restricted due to a
growing Muslim influence. Before pub-
lishing the cartoons, they were shown
to a series of experts who explained
that they most certainly would pro-
voke anger among Muslims who would
feel offended by the way their prophet
was portrayed. So, the printing of the
cartoons was from the very beginning
planned as a malicious provocation.
OFFICIAL AND REAL MO-
TIVES
It is always difficult to guess the per-
sonal motives of those who take inap-
propriate decisions. And these motives
are, indeed, of little interest. What is
important is the historical context in
which the decisions are taken and the
role generally played by the decision-
makers. From that point of view, it is
easy to conclude that the publication of
the cartoons is part of a national agenda
promoted by the Danish ruling circles
with a double purpose:
- to divide the Danish working class into
nationals and foreigners, Christians and
Muslims, in order to weaken its resist-
8 March 2006 : STRUGGLE
ance to the brutal imposition of neo-lib-
eral policies at a very specific moment
where the Danish economy is momen-
tarily one of the most thriving within
the general framework of a crisis-ridden
capitalist world economy;
- to weaken - by creating an artificial im-
age of the Muslim world as an enemy
- the growing demand among the Dan-
ish people that Danish troops should
be withdrawn from Iraq where they
are taking part in the illegal occupation
headed by U.S. imperialism.
From the very beginning, the whole
issue has been treated with a mixture
of arrogance and stupidity, both by the
editors of Jyllands Posten and by the
Danish government. It soon became
clear that the Muslim peoples did feel
offended. The Muslim society in Den-
mark, in early October, organized dem-
onstrations and called on the newspa-
per to apologize for the publication.
This was refused with the false pretext
of defending freedom of speech.
On October 19, ambassadors from 11
Muslim countries requested a meeting
with the Danish government in order
to discuss the cartoons. In a very arro-
gant manner, the rightist government
of Anders Fogh Rasmussen refused to
meet the ambassadors for a discussion
that might have prevented subsequent
events.
In an action unheard of in the history
of Danish diplomacy, 22 former Dan-
ish ambassadors publicly criticized the
Prime Minister’s refusal to meet with
representatives of Muslim countries.
They were backed by former Danish
Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen,
a cold warrior and rightist politician
who, however, is sensible to these
kinds of cultural problems. But the gov-
ernment stuck to its own decision. It
apparently was not unhappy with the
fact that the cartoons caused disunity
and distracted popular attention from
the social consequences of its planned
“welfare reforms” that were announced
last autumn.
It was only when the national agenda
turned into an international crisis of un-
precedented dimensions that the gov-
ernment and the newspaper decided
to take action. But even then, their ar-
rogance prevented them from saving
what could be saved. The editor of Jyl-
lands Posten, for example, apologized
to Muslims because they felt offended,
but he did not apologize for publishing
the offensive cartoons, because such an
apology, according to him, would be a
violation of his freedom of speech! In
this way, the apology was not enough
to end the protests and neither was the
appearance of the Danish Prime Min-
ister on Arab and Muslim television
channels where he didn’t deliver the
message expected from him.
A REACTIONARY NEWSPAPER
Jyllands Posten is one of Denmark’s
largest newspapers with a long tradition
of rightist policy. In the 1930s, it was

infamous for defending pro-Nazi posi-
tions. After the Second World War, it
turned completely pro-NATO. During
the war in Vietnam, it was a loyal ally of
U.S. imperialism. Today, it is an arduous
defender of the Zionist state of Israel
and the imperialist occupation of Iraq
and Afghanistan as well as the growing
pressure on Iran, Syria and other inde-
pendent countries.
Jyllands Posten is considered the unof-
ficial organ of expression of the Liberal
Party of Prime Minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen. As such, it is not an inno-
cent player in the present crisis. Its de-
fence of freedom of speech is nothing
but hypocritical.
During the last years, Jyllands Posten
has transformed itself into a national
platform of the most rabid attacks
against communists and other progres-
sive people. Even the most idiotic anti-
communist professor has free access
to its columns. The freedom of speech
practised by the newspaper is used to
distort, silence and criminalize commu-
nist and progressive ideas. The way the
former socialist countries in Europe and
the Danish communists who were ac-
tive during the Cold War are portrayed
is just as insulting as the 12 cartoons.
According to legend, the Danish na-
tional flag, Dannebrog, fell ready-made
down from the sky in the year 1219
during the battle of Lyndanisse where
the Danish crusaders fought to Chris-
tianize the pagan Estonians. Eight hun-
dred years later, Jyllands Posten and the
ruling Danish bourgeoisie is presenting
freedom of speech as a sacred, absolut-
ist principle that, in a similar way, fell
ready-made down from the sky in its
present narrow-minded and intolerant
Danish version.
For the Danish communists, freedom of
speech is a beautiful principle that takes
its concrete form according to the con-
crete historical context and the social
class that practises it. It is a necessity
for the free development of individual
human beings and their participation
in the democratic processes of modern
society. But it cannot be accepted as
an unlimited right of the ruling class to
insult other people and cause tension,
violence, war and destruction. Freedom
of speech should always be subordinat-
ed to ethics and the rules of civilized
behaviour among peoples and nations.
A REACTIONARY
GOVERNMENT
The extent of the anti-Danish protests
that have swept all over the Muslim
STRUGGLE : March 2006
world during the last weeks has taken
the Danish public by surprise. Very few
expected that something like this could
ever happen. For years the Danish peo-
ple have been indoctrinated with the
belief that they lived in the best of all
worlds; that they themselves were so
very tolerant and everybody else, es-
pecially the Muslim peoples, intolerant;
that their country was well-respected
and their government well-intentioned
and generous; that the Danish troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq did a fine and hu-
manitarian job and were well-received
by the local people, etc.
This lie has survived and taken root
because the Danish press, in spite of
its own claim to be liberal and broad-
minded, has turned into one of the
most controlled and regimented in Eu-
rope. This control also explains why the
Danish people haven’t seen what has
been in the pipeline for several years.
Denmark, that 20 years ago was known
for its social democratic welfare system,
its humanitarian assistance to the third
world and its footnote policy that of-
fered certain resistance to the most
aggressive plans of NATO and U.S. im-
perialism, has little by little been trans-
formed into a very reactionary country.
At the international level, this has ex-
pressed itself in Denmark’s subordina-
tion to U.S. imperialism and its partici-
pation in the aggressive wars against
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. At
the same time, Danish foreign “aid” is
being still more conditioned by the ac-
ceptance of neo-liberal and pro-imperi-
alist positions.
And at the national level, the so-called
“anti-terror” legislation, the attempts
to criminalize the communists and the
still more intolerant tone in the debate
on immigration are just some of the
expressions of a reactionary state that
several times has been censured by the
UN, the Council of Europe and Am-
nesty International for its violation of
human rights.
Now the Danish people are paying the
price for the stupid actions of its arro-
gant and reactionary ruling class. Even
the journalists who have been telling
lies for years have, like Hitler in 1941,
been caught in their own lies. They
apparently believed what they wrote
and said and are now just as surprised
as the majority of the people. But in-
stead of being critical of themselves
and their role, they are now looking for
scapegoats. And they have found these
among some local Muslim imams who,
admittedly, have engaged in contradic-
STATEMENT
tions and manipulations in order to
promote their own agenda.
In this situation, the arrogant answer of
the government is to make a distinction
between “good” and “bad” Muslims
and to promote a national organization
of the “good ones” while at the same
time ignoring or slandering the “bad
ones.” This may solve a concrete prob-
lem in the concrete situation where the
government is desperately trying to get
some allies among Muslims, but in the
long run it most certainly will add fuel
to the fire.
POSITION OF DANISH
COMMUNISTS
The Communist Party of Denmark ML,
which together with other communist
forces is preparing the founding of a
New Communist Party at a Unification
Congress in November, is taking active
part in the present class struggle and
battle of ideas. Our main line of activity
is the struggle for the unity of the work-
ing class and the mobilization of the
local and national trade union move-
ment against the dividing policy of the
ruling bourgeoisie. At the same time,
we demand that the editors of Jyllands
Posten should make a clear-cut apology
for printing the cartoons and that the
government should follow up in such
a way that it becomes absolutely clear
that it repudiates the provocation.
Our party is also active in the prepara-
tion for the big anti-war demonstrations
on March 18, which will take place un-
der the broad banner of withdrawing
the troops from Iraq. At the same time,
we are stepping up our solidarity with
the Iraqi resistance movement and the
Palestinian people while we are con-
demning the imperialist pressure and
threats against Iran, Syria and other in-
dependent countries. We believe that
the present crisis should be used to
strengthen the anti-imperialist move-
ment of solidarity with the oppressed
peoples all over the world.
Finally, we wish to say to our Muslim
brothers and sisters that at the end of
day we have the same enemies, world
imperialism headed by the Bush ad-
ministration, and that we should unite
in a broad international front in order
to fight this enemy number one of hu-
manity.
9
THEORY
Marxism and the
Labour Movement
The late 18th and early 19th centuries was
a time of immense social change – not just
political revolution but the dawn of the in-
dustrial revolution.
In the mid-19th century, from around 1840
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels penned
a series of books that reflected on this
change, developed a theory for explain-
ing social change and political revolution,
and drew up a programme for action that
became enormously influential among the
working class worldwide.
One of the key insights of Marxism was
to identify political revolutions as rooted
in wide struggles for power among social
classes. On this basis the revolutions above
can be distinguished. The earlier ones
are revolutions led by the rising capitalist
class against feudalism. The later ones re-
flect the growth of the working class with
the industrial revolution. The express the
working class struggle for power against
the new capitalist rulers.
Not only did they develop a theory for
working class liberation, but they were
leading activists in some of the first at-
tempts at working class revolutions in Eu-
rope, founders of the Communist League
in 1847 and the International Working-
man’s Association or First Internationale in
1864. You can imagine the terror amongst
the ruling classes struck by the emergence
of these organisations among workers,
who were viewed as little different from
animals. Newspaper commentaries of the
time are full of alarmist warnings about the
“reds”.
The influence of Marxism, and the fear
and loathing by which it is perceived by
the powerful, stems from its systematic at-
tention to the unanswered questions of the
foremost minds of humanity. Far from be-
ing the isolated philosophy of a sect, Marx-
ism, engages with the central problems of
philosophy, political economy and sociol-
ogy, and provides theoretical and practical
advances on traditional thinking.
Marxism, then, is a direct and critical suc-
cessor to humanity’s best thinking in the
19th century. The height of philosophy at
this time was found in Germany, with the
10
work of Kant and Hegel. The most devel-
oped political economy was that of Adam
Smith and David Ricardo. And the most
advanced sociology or socialism as it was
known was found in France, among theo-
rists such as St Simon and Fourier. Marx
and Engels engaged critically with each.
These are the three sources and, at the
same time, the component parts of Marx-
ism. Let’s briefly review each of these.
PHILOSOPHY
The philosophy of Marxism is material-
ism.
This philosophy emerged in France in the
struggle against feudalism. Against religious
superstition, materialism asserted natural
science and logic.
Marx did not simply adopt the materialism
of the nineteenth century, he enriched it,
drawing from German classical philosophy
of the time. The major development was
integrating materialism with the German
concept of dialectics.
Dialectics is a means of conceiving the
world in change. Simple or mechanical
materialism has a one-sided view of the
world; a mechanical view; for every effect
there is an external cause; things are or
they are not. Newtonian physics is a prime
example.
Dialectical materialism sees the world in
constant change; things are and they are
not. Eg. Heraclitus’ river; knowledge is
consequently relative. Modern physics,
Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum
physics etc. utilises a dialectical view (Ein-
stein was a socialist incidentally).
Marx further extended philosophy by
developing a materialist approach to the
study of human society. Against chaotic
and arbitrary accounts of society as the
product of heroic individuals, god’s will, or
chance Marx argued that society is system-
ically organised around the predominant
productive forces, and develops systemati-
cally over time.
Just as a person’s knowledge reflects na-
ture, which exists independently of the
person, so a person’s social knowledge
(values, philosophy, religion, political out-
look) reflects the nature of the productive
or economic system. Thus contemporary
politics, the political system and parties,
full of superficiality and with little room
for participation by workers, reflects the
capitalist nature of the economy.
Marxist philosophy, then, represents a
much more complete form of materialism.
Drawing from the most advanced capital-
ist thinking and extending it, Marxist phi-
losophy has provided particularly power-
ful tools of knowledge.
POLITICAL ECONOMY
Having identified the economic system
as central to social organisation, Marx de-
voted most of his attention to the study
of this economic system. Marx’s principal
work, Capital, is devoted to a study of the
economic system of modern, capitalist so-
ciety.
Classical political economy, before Marx,
evolved in England, the most developed
of the capitalist countries. Adam Smith
and David Ricardo laid the foundations of
the labour theory of value. Marx extended
their work. He argued that the value of
every commodity is determined by the
quantity of socially necessary labour time
spent on its production.
Where the capitalist economists saw a
relation of things (the exchange of one
commodity for another), Marx revealed a
relation among people. The exchange of
commodities expresses the tie by which
individual producers are bound through
the market. Money signifies that this tie
is becoming closer and closer, insepara-
bly binding the entire economic life of
the individual producers into one whole.
Capital signifies a further development of
this tie: people’s labour power becomes a
commodity. The wage-worker sells labour
power to the owner of the land, factories
and instruments of labour. The worker
uses one part of the labour day to cover
living expenses (wages), while the other
part of the day the worker toils without re-
muneration, creating surplus value for the
capitalist. This is the source of profit, the
source of the wealth of the capitalist class.
March 2006 : STRUGGLE

The theory of surplus value is the corner-
stone of Marx’s economic theory.
Capital, created by the labour of the
worker, presses on the worker by ruining
the small producers and creating an army
of unemployed. The advantages of large-
scale production is very clear in industry.
Huge firms with worldwide operations
dominate [Fortune 500]. In agriculture
too, large-scale capitalist agriculture drives
out peasant and small family producers.
By destroying small-scale production, capi-
tal leads to an increase in productivity of
labour and to the creation of a monopoly
position for the associations of big capital-
ists. Production itself becomes more and
more social as hundreds of thousands and
millions of workers become bound togeth-
er in a systematic economic organism. Yet
the product of this collective labour is ap-
propriated by a handful of capitalists.
In this situation, economic crises grow
ever-greater; the furious chase after mar-
kets and the insecurity of existence of the
mass of the population.
While increasing the dependence of the
workers on capital, the capitalist system
at the same time creates the great power
of united labour. Marx traced the devel-
opment of capitalism from the first germs
of commodity economy, from simple ex-
change, to its highest forms, to large-scale
production. He foresaw ever-greater con-
frontations between capital and labour,
only resolvable by the ultimate triumph of
labour.
SOCIALISM
When feudalism was overthrown, and
“free” capitalist society emerged, it at once
became apparent that this freedom meant
a new system of oppression and exploi-
tation of the toilers. Various socialist doc-
trines immediately began to rise as a reflec-
tion of and protest against this oppression.
But early socialism was utopian socialism.
It criticised capitalist society, it condemned
and damned it, it dreamed of its destruc-
tion, it indulged in fancies of a better order
and endeavoured to convince the rich of
the immorality of exploitation.
However, utopian socialism could not
point the real way out. It had not ex-
plained the essence of wage-slavery under
capitalism; it did not examine the process
of social development; it did not identify a
social force capable of creating a new so-
ciety. These were developments that Marx
and Engels provided.
It was the stormy revolutions everywhere
STRUGGLE : March 2006
in Europe, and especially in France, ac-
companying the fall of feudalism, that
ever more clearly revealed the struggle of
classes as the basis and the motive force of
the whole development.
Not a single victory of political freedom
over the feudal class was won except
against desperate resistance. Not a single
capitalist country evolved on a more or
less free and democratic basis except by
a life and death struggle between the vari-
ous classes of capitalist society.
The genius of Marx consists in the fact that
he was able before anybody else to draw
from this and apply consistently the de-
duction that world history revolves around
class struggle.
Marx and Engels repeatedly exposed the
way people fell victims of deceit and self-
deceit in politics until they learned to dis-
cover the interests of some class behind
the moral, religious, political and social
phrases, declarations and promises.
They argued that the supporters of re-
forms and improvements will always be
fooled by the defenders of the old order
until they realise that every old institution,
however barbarous and rotten it may ap-
pear to be, is maintained by the forces of
some ruling classes.
They insisted that there is only one way
of smashing the resistance of these classes,
and that is to find in the very society which
surrounds us, the forces capable of sweep-
ing away the old and creating the new.
The task of socialists was not to concoct
utopian schemes but to enlighten and or-
ganise these forces for this struggle.
TRANSFORM TRADE
UNIONS INTO CLASS-
STRUGGLE UNIONS
We must promote the strike movement
and make it so widespread and intense to
demonstrate to the entire people that the
monopoly capitalists are weak and rotten
to the core. We must promote the eco-
nomic strikes and transform them into po-
litical strikes and political demonstrations.
Do you want to
contribute to Struggle?
All submissions welcome.
Send submissions to: PO Box 6724, Wellington.
THEORY
Transforming unions into fighting organi-
sations requires the isolation and defeat
of class collaborationist trade union lead-
ers, by uniting left and centre unionists in
economic and political struggles. It is aided
by winning democratic reforms within un-
ions and in the creation of industrial rather
than craft-based unions. Class struggle
unions must form fighting federations to
coordinated militant activity. To transform
economic struggles into political struggles
there must be ceaseless politicisation of
the issues of the day, both domestic and
international.
We must establish new unions among un-
organised workers by carrying out social
investigation, providing political educa-
tion, organising workers around majority
demands, and consolidating workers into
unions in the course of fighting for these
demands.
To forge the strategic alliance, communists
strive to win workers to oppose all forms
of racism and sexism, including upholding
and fighting for the just demands of the
oppressed for self-determination. Only in
this way will the oppressed see that com-
munists and Pakeha and male workers
have no unity with the white and male
capitalist class.
Revolutionary pakeha and male workers
have the responsibility of opposing racism
and sexism among workers and winning
support for the oppressed. Revolutionaries
among oppressed workers have the tasks
of uniting and leading the movements of
their people and opposing narrow inter-
ests.
These tasks require the conscious organi-
sation that can only be provided by the
Communist Party. The Communist Party
must expand in workplaces and unions in
the course of the struggle if the unions to
become fighting organisations of the work-
ing class. At every stage the most advanced
elements from among the revolutionary
activists must be drawn into the party.
11
REVIEW
New Mao Biography:
Hysterical Right-wing
Rant
The words of Mao Zedong, “To be
attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing
but a good thing” must be among his
most valuable. It alters one’s conception
of struggle, and encapsulates perhaps
more succinctly than any other of his
sayings, the profoundly dialectical char-
acter of his thinking and strategy. It was
this quality that allowed Mao to exploit
the contradictions among the enemy, to
“overcome all difficulties,” and to turn
defeat into victory over and over again.
But it was not the losses and suffering
that such attacks brought that Mao was
referring to—what he called the “bit-
ter sacrifice” that revolution required,
though he was always determined to
turn it into “bold resolve” (“Shaoshan
Revisited,” in Poems, Beijing: Foreign
Languages Press, 1976, 36). The reason
that to be attacked was a “good,” and
not a “bad” thing, was that it meant that
the revolutionary forces were hurting the
enemy, were a challenge to their control,
and were successfully carrying out the
struggle. Otherwise, why would those
opposed to the revolution even bother
to attack? The less restraint such enemies
showed, the more it revealed their own
weaknesses and blinded them to reality.
“It is still better if the enemy attacks us
wildly and paints us as utterly black and
without a single virtue; it demonstrates
that we have not only drawn a clear line
of demarcation between the enemy and
ourselves but achieved a great deal in our
work” (“To Be Attacked by the Enemy is
Not a Bad Thing But a Good Thing”,
May 26, 1939). The more strongly the
revolutionaries were attacked, therefore,
the higher the measure of the success
that they must be having, in order to
cause such a response from their ene-
mies. Moreover, a blind thrashing out by
those opposing the revolution, guided
only by hatred, would cause them to
make serious errors and discredit them
in the eyes of the people.
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang
and Jon Halliday reflects these words of
Mao Zedong. It is not scholarship but
hysterical right-wing rant. Its purpose is
12
to demonize Mao Zedong and destroy
his reputation, pure and simple. Even
more they are trying to undermine the
very sense of an alternative to the cur-
rent disaster of a world we live in - and
to deny all of the incredible successes
of the Chinese revolution. The narra-
tive Chang and Halliday employ is that
Mao was evil from the day he was born
- and committed evil upon evil until the
day he died. Chang and Halliday recon-
struct and fabricate history to make their
desired case that a scheming and blood-
thirsty opportunist hijacked an entire
people and country.
To turn this from a bad thing into a good
thing we must seize the opportunity to
make the reader beware. Chang and
Halliday are telling unabashed lies. ‘Mao:
The Unknown Story’ plays fast and loose
with facts, offers far-fetched theories
based not on careful investigation but
unrelenting hatred of Mao, and twists
reality to fit an anticommunist agenda.
Its message is that the Chinese revolu-
tion was not really necessary, and that
great revolutionary leaders like Mao are
in fact power-crazed tyrants and perpe-
trators of towering crimes. This book is
a brief against revolution and revolution-
ary leaders. If you swallowed the justify-
ing arguments about “weapons of mass
destruction,” you’ll adore this book.
WAS A REVOLUTION NEEDED?
The authors paint a picture of a revolu-
tion based on manipulation and terror.
They whitewash the incredible misery
and suffering of the old society, and the
fact that for more than a century China
had been beaten down and dominated
by the imperialist powers of the West
and Japan. They deny that tens and hun-
dreds of millions of Chinese peasants
and workers could possibly take up the
revolutionary cause as their own. The
masses of people have no agency in the
company of Chang and Halliday - they
are but pawns and putty.
You would not learn from this book that
pre-revolutionary China was a society
where arranged marriages and footbind-
ing were widespread social practices. Or
that four million people died each year of
infectious and parasitic diseases. Or that
in a city like Shanghai, young women
workers were locked in textile factories
at night, and one out of five persons was
an opium addict. You wouldn’t know
that the revolution in power rapidly
transformed these social conditions. The
Marriage Law of 1950, one of the first
decrees of the new People’s Republic,
established marriage by mutual consent
and the right to divorce, and outlawed
the sale of children and infanticide.
MAO AS REVOLUTIONARY
THEORIST AND
REVOLUTIONARY LEADER
In this aspect the book really does
border on the absurd. The authors are
consumed with such venom for Mao
that they cannot - in all 630 pages -
bring themselves to engage with Mao’s
writings and speeches themselves. ‘Mao:
The Unknown Story’ doesn’t address
Mao the writer, thinker or speaker at
all! For Chang and Halliday, Mao’s ideas
are simply hypocritical and manipulative
means to attain personal domination.
In fact, Mao analyzed the nature of
Chinese society and developed pro-
grams and policies that spoke to the
real material and social contradictions
of Chinese society; and Mao brought
forth a vision of moving society beyond
exploitation and social divisions. It is not
the personal Mao but the lessons left in
his writings and notes from his speeches
that inspire revolutions in Nepal, India
and the Philippines and that are referred
to by Chavez and Morales. He inspired
and motivated great numbers of people
in China and around the world. It is this
that the authors find so reprehensible.
SHODDY METHODS AND
SENSATIONISTIC CLAIMS
The authors bask in the glow of a
vast arsenal of references and sources
- memoirs, hitherto inaccessible archives,
interviews - and ten years of research.
March 2006 : STRUGGLE

Boasting more than 125 pages of notes
and sources...what the book says must
be true - right? No, this is a snow job,
and the relationship between claim and
supporting evidence is shoddy beyond
belief.
DADU BRIDGE
The famous battle at the Dadu River
Bridge during the Long March is now
declared (pp. 152-55) to be a hoax, a self-
serving myth invented by Mao and the
Chinese Communist Party. The authors
claim that “there was no battle” and “no
Nationalist [Kuomintang] troops at the
bridge.” They cite as a substantiating
source the Kuomintang (KMT) archives.
The KMT, which set world standards in
corruption, and which suffered defeat at
the hands of the Communist Party-led
forces, is not exactly the most reliable
source. Still, these archives contain use-
ful historiographic materials—but, lo and
behold, other scholars who have studied
the KMT archives say they do not at all
support the Chang/Halliday rewrite of
history. Okay, but the authors furnish
what they consider to be additional
evidence, and key to this are the recol-
lections of a “sprightly 93-year old” local
woman they say they met in 1997! The
Melbourne Age sent a journalist to the
same village when the book was pub-
lished - the local villagers said that no
one from their village had ever lived to
be 93, and that a now eighty year old
- ten at the time of the battle - remem-
bered the incident vividly. This quality
of scholarship would be laughable in
any other discipline. But somehow you
can get away with this when it comes to
Mao and the Chinese Revolution.
EDUCATION
Listen to this gem about Mao’s view on
education (p. 438): “Mao’s approach
was not to raise the general standard of
education in society as a whole, but to
focus on a small elite, predominantly in
science and other ‘useful’ subjects, and
leave the rest of the population to be
illiterate or semi-literate slave laborers.” If
that were the case, how can you explain
the fact that China’s literacy rate vaulted
from 15 percent in 1949 to close to 80
percent by Mao’s death? Or that educa-
tional resources were vastly expanded
in the rural areas during the Cultural
Revolution, leading to rise in middle-
school enrollment from 15 to 58 mil-
lion? Or that with the huge opening up
of educational opportunities through the
Cultural Revolution, worker and peas-
ant students became the great majority
of China’s university enrollment by the
early 1970s.
STRUGGLE : March 2006
PATRIOTISM
Chang and Halliday seek to challenge
the accepted view that ‘the CCP were
more patriotic and keener to fight Japan
than the nationalists’, which they say is
an example of ‘history rewritten’ and
‘completely untrue’. They support this
assertion with a nit-picking analysis of
the difference between the CCP slo-
gans ‘”Down with the Nationalists”, but
merely “oppose Japanese Imperialism”’.
But before considering the facts of the
case, it is worth asking who it was that
so deceived us. ‘Chiang Kai-shek had
adopted a policy of non-resistance in the
face of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria
and increasing encroachments on China
proper’, according to one account, ‘and
had concentrated instead on trying to
annihilate the Communists’. Who is the
author? Jung Chang, in Wild Swans,
the best-ever-selling family memoir. To
support this earlier claim, Chang quotes
Chiang Kai-shek’s maxim, ‘the Japanese
are a disease of the skin, the Communists
are a disease of the heart’.
A NEW INTERPRETATION
Indeed Mao: The Unknown Story flatly
contradicts Wild Swans throughout. One
revelation in Unknown Story is that Mao
engineered Chiang Kai-shek’s abduc-
tion by his junior Chang Hsuieh-lang
in 1936. But in Wild Swans Chiang
was ‘partly saved by the Communists’.
Perhaps Unknown Story is intended to
correct the ‘completely untrue’ claims
made in Wild Swans, and put the 10
million readers of this best-ever-selling
non-fiction paperback right. But there
are no indications that Jung Chang is
correcting her earlier assertions in the
text or footnotes. And, on the back page
REVIEW
cover of Unknown Story, not corrections
of, but ‘praise for Wild Swans’.
It is not just the earlier Wild Swans that
contradicts the argument in Unknown
Story that the nationalists took on the
Japanese occupiers, or the many other
sources, but the facts presented in
Unknown Story itself. Just 20 pages on,
Chang and Halliday tell us that Chiang
Kai-shek ‘mobilised half a million troops’.
To fight the Japanese? No. ‘He had
agreed a truce with the Japanese, acqui-
escing to their seizure of parts of north
China, in addition to Manchuria, and this
freed him to concentrate his strength on
fighting the reds’, they write approv-
ingly (all the time condemning Mao
for fighting Chiang, not the Japanese).
When evidence of Communist opposi-
tion to Japan is unavoidable, Chang
and Halliday insist that it was an excep-
tion, as in the July 1940 campaign
against supply lines in northern China to
relieve besieged Chongqing, which cost
the Eighth Route Army 90,000 men.
When Chiang Kai-shek slaughters the
Communist New Fourth Army in 1941,
Chang and Halliday want it both ways:
minimising the atrocity, but also blaming
Mao for betraying his rival commander
Xiang Ying.
It is not the facts that are new, so much
as the interpretation that Chang and
Halliday put on them. Even the interpre-
tation is not that new, repeating much
of the argument put by the US right, the
Taiwanese government created by the
Kuomintang’s retreat to that island, and
more latterly by the increasing number
of mainland Chinese critics of Mao.
13
REVIEW/REPORT
THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
ON THE SCALES OF HISTORY
The Chinese revolution was a turning
point in the history of the 20th cen-
tury. As Mao said in 1949, “the Chinese
people have stood up.” They stood up
to feudal landlords, the Japanese invad-
ers, the U.S.-financed KMT army, and
foreign powers. Despite the authors’
outrageous claims, it was Mao who led
in developing a military strategy to sur-
round the cities from the countryside.
He led in the development of a socialist
society marked by the creative energy
and initiative of those who had previ-
ously been treated as no more than a
pair of hands.
This was a revolution that brought enor-
mous social and economic progress to
the great majority of people. Life expect-
ancy more than doubled, from 32 years
in 1949 to 65 years in 1975. China
under Mao achieved what the U.S. has
proven incapable of coming close to:
a universal and egalitarian health care
system. Industry grew by more than
10 percent a year during the Cultural
Revolution. And by the early 1970s,
China had solved its historic food prob-
lem. This revolution saved untold num-
bers of lives.
The Cultural Revolution, far from being
Mao’s “Great Purge,” was a “revolution
within the revolution.” It was a broad
movement and upheaval aimed at pre-
venting a new privileged class from tak-
ing power and turning China back in
time: to a sweatshop paradise riddled
with corruption and inequality.
China Diary with Paul White
PAUL WHITE for Morning Star
MARXISM GIVEN A FRESH
BOOST
President Hu Jintao spent the lunar
New Year holidays last month in Yan’an,
known as the “cradle of the Chinese
revolution.”
His visit and his call for a renewal of the
“Yan’an spirit” were significant, because
they come hard on the heels of a drive
by the Communist Party of China (CPC)
to get back to the basics of Marxism after
many years of drifting in an ideologi-
cal limbo euphemistically described as
“pragmatism.”
The Institute of Marxism was set up
under the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences on December 26 - the anniver-
14
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Basically two things. First, the truth of
Mao and the Chinese revolution--what
this revolution was about, what Mao
stood for and did, and what the Chinese
people accomplished. Second, the ques-
tion of humanity’s future: can we put an
end to the horrific exploitation, oppres-
sion, and inequality of the world as it
is, and radically transform it—or is this
the only world possible? ‘Mao: The
Unknown Story’ is character assassina-
tion with a reactionary moral writ large:
dreams of radical and revolutionary
change are doomed; long live the status
quo.
Thus the crucial point here is not the
rehabilitation or the dismissal of a single
leader, however central he was to the
past revolutionary struggle. The critical
sary of the birth of Mao Zedong.
It is part of President Hu’s Project on
the Foundation and Establishment of
Marxism.
According to Outlook magazine, the
propaganda dept of the CPC is in charge
of the day-to-day affairs of the project,
which has 300 researchers and a budget
for the next 10 years of about £12 mil-
lion.
Some 20 conferences have already been
held on the subject and the project results
will be publicised every three years.
A core element of the project is new
translations of standard Marxist works to
be distributed to schools and among the
general public.
issue now is whether the Chinese peo-
ple, together with those of the entire
world, will again turn back toward the
road to socialist revolution. A full and
fair evaluation of the record of Mao
can only aid in reopening that question
and pointing to a positive answer. In
this sense, being attacked by Chang and
Halliday is “not a bad thing but a good
thing.” But this will only be the case if
those who support the socialist revolu-
tion not only in China but worldwide,
embrace the new opportunity that is
offered to them by the publication of
this book, to raise again the goals that
Mao advanced, and that he spent his
entire life struggling to achieve, and
renew their dedication to the struggle of
the global working classes that he helped
to lead, and that is as necessary today as
when he was alive.
State Translation Bureau spokesman Yang
Jinhai said: “A lot of the problems which
have cropped up in the past two decades
of the reform and opening-up period
were caused by faulty comprehension of
the science of Marxism.”
He blamed poorly translated Western
versions of Marxist works for confusion
over, for instance, how to handle China’s
private sector and neglect of the interests
of the peasants.
The project indicates Hu’s determination
that the income and opportunity inequal-
ities which have reached a worrying stage
in China will be addressed with a socialist
consciousness.
March 2006 : STRUGGLE

Homeland Security Let New
Orleans Down: Katrina Survivors
Still Face Hardship
by LeiLani Dowell for Workers World
While Congressional and Senate investiga-
tions expose the bungling of federal and lo-
cal authorities in the immediate aftermath
of Katrina, current-day negligence has led
to more despair -and resistance-by Katrina
survivors.
The draft of a report by an all-Republican
committee on Feb. 12 called the govern-
ment response to Katrina a “national fail-
ure... of initiative.” The draft notes predic-
tions about the storm that went unheeded
for up to 24 hours, the lack of preparation
to evacuate people from the area, and the
dismissal of a report that a major levee had
been breached. The draft goes on to say
that “At every level—individual, corporate,
philanthropic and governmental—we failed
to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In
this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built
houses of straw.”
Meanwhile, Senate hearings on the same
issue continue. On Feb. 10, fired and dis-
graced former FEMA head Michael Brown
testified. The New York Times reports, “Mr.
Brown said that he told a senior White
House official early on of the New Orle-
ans flooding, and that the administration
was too focused on terrorism to respond
properly to natural disasters.” And on Feb.
15, Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff faced the committee. Senators
questioned, among other things, why he
decided to travel to Atlanta to attend a con-
ference unrelated to Katrina the day after
the storm struck.
What is conspicuously absent from media
reports about these two investigations is in-
quiry into current neglect. In response to
the draft report, a White House spokesper-
son told the New York Times that “Presi-
dent Bush was now focused on the future.”
However, this does not seem to translate
to relief for Katrina survivors. On Feb. 7
about 4,500 survivors across the country
were told to evacuate their hotel rooms
because the Federal Emer gency Manage-
ment Agency would no longer be paying
for their hotel stays. The rest—occupants
of at least 20,000 hotel rooms, according
to the Associated Press, were given exten-
sions of only one to three weeks. A judge
on Feb. 13 upheld FEMA’s decision to drop
survivors from the program.
STRUGGLE : March 2006
Protests were held across the country to
denounce the evictions. In New York sur-
vivors, with the support of legal advocates
and solidarity activists, have won a reprieve
on their eviction from hotels in the city.
Using a city law stating that legal evictions
must be done through court proceedings
and by court order, 17 families at the Radis-
son won an indefinite stay on their eviction.
Armed with that victory, activists on Feb. 13
went to hotels across the city to distribute
legal fact sheets to let survivors know their
rights, while legal aid lawyers filed the same
motion won at the Radisson to extend to
all the hotels.
While evictions continue across the coun-
try, leaving many with no place to go,
FEMA trailers continue to sit unused. Activ-
ists with the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund
(PHRF) rallied on Feb. 12 at a FEMA trailer
site on a lot in the New Orleans’ Eighth
Ward, where approximately 100 such un-
inhabited trailers reside. The rally was to
demand that the trailers be made imme-
diately available to all those facing eviction.
According to the group’s press release,
“The trailers are apparently hooked up to
power and have plumbing, but are not be-
ing used to provide much-needed shelter
for the 10,000-plus New Orleans residents
that have come back to rebuild their homes
and their lives.”
In Hope, Ark., FEMA placed 10,770 of its
brand-new, completely furnished trailers
at an airport that was once a military base.
The trailers remain empty. FEMA not only
intends to keep these trailers there, but is
planning to lay down a 290-acre gravel bed
beneath them, at a cost of $6 million, ac-
cording to the Feb. 10 Los Angeles Times.
Under the Stafford Act, FEMA is required
to provide local transitional housing and
rental assistance to the survivor’s workplace
for eighteen months after a disaster. The
Times article quotes FEMA spokesperson
Nicol Andrews, who says that part of the
blame for the distant location of the trailers
lies with the fact that “only eight of Louisi-
ana’s 64 parishes have welcomed them.”
The will of local officials to carry forward
with the gentrification of the region - de-
nying the poorest, mostly Black survivors
the resources and support to return - is
also reflected in the upcoming elections
REPORT
in New Orleans, now scheduled for April
22 although many residents have not yet
been able to return. The Washington D.C.-
based Advancement Project filed a lawsuit
that says the election plan, which plans to
use some form of absentee voting to reach
evacuees, will in effect freeze many Black
voters out of the process.
The Associated Press notes that, “The most
striking aspect of the race is the number
of prominent white business leaders and
politicians who have jumped into the fray.
Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin remains the
only Black candidate among more than half
a dozen hopefuls.” The last white mayor in
the city completed his term in 1978.
The AP article quotes New Orleans politi-
cal analyst Silas Lee, who says, “Everything
reflects the effects of Hurricane Katrina
on the demographics of the city.... [T]hat
impacted how many white candidates per-
ceive their political fortunes.”
Groups like the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People and
the National Policy Alliance, which is com-
prised of leaders from a number of national
Black organizations, have also issued calls
against the election and threatened to hold
demonstrations and take further legal ac-
tion.
Meanwhile, those stuck in the prison-in-
dustrial complex in New Orleans will be
incarcerated for even longer without a trial.
A district judge suspended all the cases
in his section on Feb. 10, citing a lack of
public defenders, on which 80 percent of
all criminal defendants in the city rely. The
Times-Picayune says that other judges are
expected to take similar action, and there-
fore “More than 3,500 pre-Katrina defend-
ants and about 1,000 defendants arrested
since the storm could be thrown in limbo.”
Lorraine Ervin, a returning New Orleans
resident, summed up the sentiment and re-
solve of many Katrina survivors in the press
release from PHRF: “We are refugees in
our own country. Where are our tax dollars
that we’ve paid all of our lives? Why can
$60 billion dollars go toward war in Iraq?
There is no way we should be here [in the
U.S.] begging... I will fight for my rights.”
15
COMMENT
450,000 NGOs in Russia:
U.S. Finances Opposition
by Sara Flounders for Workers World
A struggle is developing in Russia over
legislation regulating non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that is due to go
into effect in April.
The new law was passed by both
houses of the Russian legislature, called
the Duma, and signed by President
Vladimir Putin on Jan. 10. Resistance to
it has opened a window on the level of
Western and especially U.S. intervention
in Russia today.
Under the new law, foreign organiza-
tions and groups receiving funding from
outside Russia have to register with the
government. Russian officials say the
legislation is necessary to combat the
hundreds of millions of dollars flowing
from foreign governments to organiza-
tions in the country.
An original version of the law was toned
down under an intense campaign of
pressure from the NGOs themselves and
from the U.S. government. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice pressured Putin,
expressing concern for “democracy.”
The legislation was on the agenda at the
recent G-8 meeting.
The law imposes restrictions on the
financing, registration and activities of
NGOs. This term originally meant any
non-profit, voluntary, civic, humanitari-
an, health, human rights, service or envi-
ronmental organization. Now a huge
number of organizations that claim to be
non-governmental, but rely on the U.S.
and other major imperialist countries
and on big corporations for their funds,
operate in Russia and in many countries
around the world. They dispense aid,
set policy and intervene in political life
based on the political agenda and eco-
nomic interests of the funders.
The sheer number of organizations
described as NGOs and the number
receiving foreign funding is staggering.
Since 1991 and the collapse of the
Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands
of NGOs have sprung up in Russia.
Members of the Russian Duma say
over 450,000 NGOs operate in Russia
today. The Yale Center for the Study
of Globalization puts the number even
16
higher, saying that “There are at least
600,000 registered non-governmental,
non-commercial organizations operat-
ing in Russia. At least as many may be
working in the country without official
registration.”
Duma deputy Alexei Ostrovsky, a co-
author of the new law, estimates up
to a quarter of Russian NGOs receive
money from abroad. These include envi-
ronmental groups, human rights moni-
tors and consumer advocates.
President Putin, in supporting the legisla-
tion, said: “Whether these organizations
want it or not, they become an instru-
ment in the hands of foreign states that
use them to achieve their own political
objectives. This situation is unaccept-
able. This law is designed to prevent
interference in Russia’s internal politi-
cal life by foreign countries and create
transparent conditions for the financing
of nongovernmental organizations.”
THE CROSS FOLLOWED
THE GUN
When the European capitalist nations
first established colonies around the
world, the cross followed the gun.
Thousands of missionaries were an inte-
gral part of the machinery of conquest
and subjugation.
Establishing a colonial administration
meant reorganizing society and the own-
ership of property in a way that ben-
efited the colonizers. It involved schools,
training and political orientation for
those among the local elite who would
become collaborators. Religious conver-
sion helped to pacify a whole section of
the population, and paved the way for
some to become loyal and fervent serv-
ants of the new power structure.
Today in Russia, not just religious organi-
zations have been flooding into the
region. The primary role of proselytizing
capitalist values is played by “human
rights” NGOs.
In response to these new restrictions,
the volume of political pressure and pro-
tests from Washington has been turned
up. But it is sheer hypocrisy. Regulations
that are far more restrictive and intrusive
monitor organizations in the U.S.
Any individual or organization here that
accepts money from a foreign country
must register with the U.S. government
under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act. Charitable donations are a matter
of public record. Imagine Russia, China,
Cuba, North Korea or Iran pumping
millions of dollars into political organiza-
tions in the U.S. Even U.S. allies such as
Britain, France, Germany or Japan can-
not secretly fund political organizations
within the U.S.
Alexei Pankin, writing in the Jan. 25
issue of the magazine Russia Profile,
described his relation with two NGOs.
“I ran a USAID-funded three-year pro-
gram supporting Russian media, with
a total budget of $10.5 million, and a
Soros Foundation program supporting
Russian media with an annual budget of
$1.8 million. The number of supervisors,
bosses, inspectors and advisers who I
had to deal with (or had to deal with
me) defies belief. I am sure there were
intelligence officers among them.”
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB),
successor of the KGB, on Jan. 23
accused four British diplomats of spying.
It said it had caught one of them “red-
handed” channeling funds to several
Russian nongovernmental organizations.
London denied misconduct, saying it
openly funded NGOs in Russia.
Significant foreign funding comes direct-
ly from U.S. sources, such as the quasi-
governmental National Endowment for
Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID),
and from the European Union’s Tacis
Program. Millions of dollars in funding
originates with foundations that repre-
sent the interests of the wealthy elite,
such as the Ford, MacArthur, Carnegie,
Rockefeller and Soros organizations.
REGIME CHANGE IN GEORGIA,
UKRAINE AND KYRGYZSTAN
The role of U.S.-funded NGOs in trying
to impose “regime change” in Cuba,
Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua and Haiti
is increasingly understood. The role of
these same subversive organizations in
Eastern Europe and the countries that
made up the former Soviet Union is less
well known, even though they operate
March 2006 : STRUGGLE

on an even larger scale there.
Russia’s FSB security service chief,
Nikolai Patrushev, recently blamed for-
eign-funded NGOs for fomenting coups
in the post-Soviet states of Georgia,
Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
The active and open role that foreign-
funded NGOS played in the overturn
of these three governments is what
is setting off alarm bells in Moscow.
The imperialist media fondly call these
coups “velvet revolutions” and some-
times “color revolutions” for the colors
chosen by the opposition forces.
Ironically, the political leaders who
were overthrown—especially Eduard
Shevardnadze in Georgia and Leonid
Kuchma in Ukraine—had in the past
been the U.S.-chosen candidates. Both
had carried out policies that brought
their governments into the U.S. orbit.
They had pushed for joining NATO’s
“Partnership for Peace.” Both had agreed
to send troops to Iraq.
Yet both politicians were unceremo-
niously thrown out when they were
not totally compliant with U.S. corpo-
rate demands. Both of their replace-
ments—Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia
and Viktor Yuschchenko in Ukraine—
had served in the governments of their
predecessors.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell said after attending Yuschchenko’s
inauguration as president of Ukraine
on Jan 23, 2005, that he was “proud
to have been associated with both
events”—in Georgia and Ukraine.
Much insight into U.S. plans for the
future and evaluations of past interven-
tions can actually be found on the web
sites of the foundations behind these
regime changes.
40,000 NGOS IN UKRAINE
In an article on the World Bank’s website
entitled: “Civil Society Development in
Ukraine and the Orange Revolution,” Vira
Nanivska, director of the International
Center for Policy Studies in Ukraine,
brags: “Today some 40,000 NGOs in
Ukraine involve 12 percent of the pop-
ulation—and these organizations have
been a key active force in the Orange
Revolution.” (www.worldbank.org)
She describes how international consult-
ants, policy experts and technical assist-
ants work in coordination to change
legislation, develop interest groups, set
up media centers and develop protest
movements. NGOs affect legislation,
STRUGGLE : March 2006
train civil servants, establish community
councils and business associations, and
push to revise the state budget in their
own interests.
Young people and student organizations
are drawn in through campaigns around
HIV/AIDS, protection of minority rights
and fighting child abandonment. The
whole aim of this web of projects, she
explains, is to prevent any “backsliding
towards the old regime” and to push for
“Euro-integration,” meaning integrating
into international and European organi-
zations like NATO and the World Bank.
The overturn of socialist ownership and
the breakup of the Soviet Union is
a process that did not end in 1991.
Shaping the laws on property, the rights
of foreign capital, justifying the expro-
priation and privatizing of the socially
owned resources, industry and serv-
ices for individual profit, dismembering
social programs, shaping the media,
education and culture, and undermining
any assertions of sovereignty are a much
longer process.
These funds have an even greater impact
in a region where the centralized social-
ist planning that once guaranteed pen-
sions, full employment, free health care,
free education and subsidized housing
is gone. Its brutal dismembering has
affected millions of people, leaving them
intensely angry with the leaders who
betrayed them.
FUNDING YOUTH
MOVEMENTS
A significant part of the U.S. corporate
funding is to create youth movements.
The Soros Foundation, USAID and the
NED together funded the Serbian youth
group Otpor. Young people were pro-
vided specialized training and seminars
in Budapest, Hungary, along with t-
shirts, stickers, posters, office rent and
a newspaper, as part of the successful
campaign to overturn the Milosevic gov-
ernment in Serbia.
In Georgia, the Soros Foundation budg-
eted $4.6 million for the youth group
Kmara, which became a primary weap-
on against the government. In Ukraine,
Soros budgeted $7 million for the youth
group Pora.
The opendemocracy.net web site is
funded by the Ford and Rockefeller
foundations. An article there by Sreeram
Chaulia analyzes the role of U.S.-funded
NGOs from Georgia to Kyrgyzstan and
Ukraine. The blurb for it is provocative,
saying that “new forms of youthful, tech-
savvy mass mobilization are impelling
COMMENT
regime change from below. But is the
phenomenon as benign as it appears?
Are the movements who inspire the
‘color revolutions’ catalysts or sabo-
teurs?”
The author is not criticizing these NGOs;
he is evaluating their effectiveness in
implementing “regime change.” A few
of his observations give insight into how
these political organizations operate as
just another weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
“Sabotage can suffice in some countries
while full-scale military offensives may
be needed in others,” Chaulia says.
“These three revolutions—the ‘rose revo-
lution’ in Georgia (November 2003-
January 2004), the ‘orange revolution’
in Ukraine (January 2005) and the
‘tulip revolution’ in Kyrgyzstan (April
2005)—each followed a near-identical
trajectory; all were spearheaded by the
American democratization Ingos [inter-
national NGOs] working at the behest
of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
... Rarely has the U.S. promoted human
rights and democracy in a region when
they did not suit its grander foreign-poli-
cy objectives. ... Ingos heavily dependent
on U.S. finances have been found to be
consciously or subconsciously extending
U.S. governmental interests. ...
“NED’s first president, Allen Weinstein,
admitted openly that ‘a lot of what we
do today was done covertly 25 years ago
by the CIA. ... NED was conceived as a
quasi-governmental foundation that fun-
neled U.S. government funding through
Ingos like the National Democratic
Institute for International Affairs (NDI),
the International Republican Institute
(IRI), International Foundation for
Electoral Systems (IFES), International
Research and Exchanges Board (IREX),
and Freedom House. ...
“The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,
worked closely with NGOs like Freedom
House and the Soros Foundation—sup-
plying generators, printing presses and
money to keep the protests boiling
until President Akayev fled. Information
about where protesters should gather
and what they should bring was spread
through State Department-funded radio
and TV stations.”
Today’s new and developing anti-war
movement needs an understanding of
the many forms of U.S. intervention,
along with the chaos and instability that
it breeds. This will build anti-imperialist
awareness and strengthen the growing
global demand of “U.S. out now!”
17
UPDATE
'State of Emergency' in Philippines
Demonstrates Regimes Panic
Republic of the Philippines President Glo-
ria Macapagal Arroyo is in a state of panic.
With the prospect of her regime’s ouster
getting more proximate in the months
ahead, Arroyo is resorting to every means
in its arsenal of dirty tricks to prevent its
downfall.
Desperately holding on to authority, Ar-
royo is unleashing fascist attacks on both
the traditional and progressive opposition.
In the countrysides and cities, Arroyo’s
minions of fascist generals are responsible
for the murders of leaders and members of
legal democratic mass organizations.
Arroyo placates the US imperialist by kow-
towing to the latter’s demands for more
areas to be covered by the Balikatan ex-
ercises to make the Philippines a staging
ground for the bogus “war on terror.”
But this dictator will fail and will fall sooner
or later. It is now fully isolated from the
broad masses of the people. It is able to
hold on to power only because of the sup-
port of US imperialism, a faction of big
business and financial elite, paid hacks in
the reactionary parliament and of corrupt
generals. To know where she gets her sup-
port, you only have to look at the pathetic
sight of the same politicians and generals
trooping to Malacañang whenever mas-
sive protest actions stun the Arroyo presi-
dency.
History, legitimacy and reason are unques-
tionably on the side of the Filipino people.
This latest Arroyo declaration will further
inflame them, giving added impetus to sus-
tained defiance and intensified resistance.
In the end, the weight of the people’s mass
movement and the revolutionary armed
struggle will crush this dictatorship.
Struggle and the Communist Party of
Aotearoa endorse the Philippines Solidar-
ity Network of Aotearoa’s call for the New
Zealand government to join us in con-
demning, in the strongest terms possible,
the declaration of a State of Emergency by
Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Ar-
royo.
This latest desperate move by the Presi-
dent to cling to power in the face of a tide
of popular protest arising from the blatant
electoral fraud that was used to steal the
2004 Presidential election.
It harks back to the 1972-86 reign of terror
18
that the Philippine people endured when
the murderous tyrant, Ferdinand Marcos,
imposed martial law. The greatest irony is
that this State of Emergency has been im-
posed during the 20th anniversary celebra-
tions of Marcos’ overthrow by the world
famous People Power.
There are other troubling throwbacks to
the Marcos dictatorship. One of the first
people to be arrested on Friday was Rep-
resentative Crispin Beltran, who became
well-known to New Zealanders when the
Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa
toured him through the country in 1999,
in his capacity as a national trade union
leader. He is being held on a 1985 charge
i.e. one that dates from the martial law pe-
riod.
The Arroyo regime is now a full-blown
open dictatorship. In one clean sweep,
Dictator Arroyo has completely done away
with bourgeois-democratic pretenses and
shall henceforth rule only through the co-
ercive apparatus of the state: armed forces,
police, jails and militarist decrees.
The “state of national emergency” is a fa-
miliar fascist tool cloaked in legal-political-
military gobbledygook condemned even
by bourgeois-constitutionalists and lawyers.
This aims to quash through brute force any
and all forms of opposition to the hated
regime. It displays the ruthless and naked
use of the reactionary state’s armed forces
against the people.
The real malevolent objective of Arroyo
in issuing the proclamation is to suppress
the people’s assemblies in the nationwide
anniversary celebration of the events of
22-25 February 1986 that resulted in the
overthrow of Marcos. She is terribly afraid
that the people’s mass actions critical of
her rotten and hated regime would en-
courage her own military and police forces
to withdraw support from her.
Indeed, she has undertaken so-called
preemptive actions by ordering the arrest
of military and police officers suspected
of opposing her regime and revoking rally
permits nationwide and ordering the vio-
lent dispersal of people in peaceful assem-
bly. The proclamation and its immediate
consequences demonstrate that Arroyo is
tyrannizing the people and even her own
military and police officers whom she sus-
pects of siding with the people.
Proclamation 1017 is a tyrannical act of
desperation by an utterly isolated usurper
of authority and her small coterie. It ma-
liciously misrepresents the movement of
the people and the broad united front as a
mere conspiracy of the so-called extremes
of the Left and the Right. It proves that
Arroyo will go to any length, including the
bloody suppression of the people and her
opponents.
The root causes of the whole ongoing Phil-
ippine crisis are massive poverty, inequal-
ity, institutionalised State violence and cor-
ruption. The New Zealand Government
could play a constructive role in the affairs
of this near neighbour is by offering our
expertise in brokering peace agreements.
The Philippines desperately needs peace
and social justice. The last thing it needs
is a reversion to a military dictatorship as
a discredited and desperate President tries
to cling to power. At this time of crisis, the
Philippine people need all the help they
can get.
The National Democratic Front of the Phil-
ippines has declared that among the oppo-
sition parties, the legal forces of the nation-
al democratic movement and the ranks of
retired and active anti-Arroyo military and
police officers in the broad united front
there is a growing common desire to form
a transition council that can negotiate a
just and lasting peace with the NDFP. The
New Zealand government should offer to
host and facilitate such talks as would be
necessary to allow for a new Philippines
that is truly independent, democratic, so-
cially just, progressive and peaceful.
March 2006 : STRUGGLE

Rewi Alley, 1897 - 1987
Jung Chang’s ‘biography’ of Mao Zedong
(reviewed earlier in this issue) is far from the
only attempt to take from the masses a revo-
lutionary symbol.
In October 2002 - appropriately on the day
celebrated as Taiwan’s ‘national’ day - a Uni-
versity of Canterbury academic Anne-Marie
Brady published a scurrilous attack on Rewi
Alley. In it she claimed that Alley’s political
decisions were dominated by his alleged ho-
mosexuality and that he had been a pawn of
the Communist Party of China in spreading
their ‘propaganda’ in exchange for a steady
diet of vulnerable young men.
The truth is significantly different.
Rewi Alley was born in Springfield, Canter-
bury in 1897. His father, a schoolmaster, and
his mother, who was active in the temperance
and women’s rights movements installed in
him respect for hard work, discipline, a desire
for education, and a willingness to challenge
authority. He was christened Rewi out of the
family’s respect for Ngati Maniapoto leader
and anti-colonial fighter Rewi Maniapoto.
His academic record was indifferent and
Rewi felt overshadowed by his siblings who
became All Blacks, university lecturers and
founders of the playcentre movement. In
March 1917 he volunteered for war service.
He was wounded during combat in France
and gained the Military Medal. In France he
met members of the Chinese Armed Forces
who were also fighting the German-led coali-
tion and an interest in China was born. On
returning to New Zealand he joined a com-
panion, Jack Stevens, in an unsuccessful six-
year attempt to break in, and then farm, hill
and bush country at Moeawatea, inland from
Waverley, Taranaki. These were hard physical
experiences that endowed Alley with stami-
na and resilience.
Following his curiosity he first went to Chi-
na in 1927, intending to visit but ultimately
staying for the rest of his life. He worked
in Shanghai, as a fire officer and then as a
municipal factory inspector. While there he
saw the deplorable conditions that Chinese
workers faced under imperialism and the
incompetent corrupt rule of the KMT. Alley
formed close friendships with other anti-im-
perialists in Shanghai, such as the Americans
Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes
Smedley, and drew close to the revolution-
ary forces.
Although as a foreigner in Shanghai Alley
would normally have been insulated from
the realities the Chinese faced; his job, and
the fact that he spent his holidays involved in
STRUGGLE : March 2006
flood and famine relief work, provided him
with direct experience of the poverty and
hardship sustained by the Chinese peasantry.
He began to directly support the revolution:
allowing his house to be used for a radio
transmitter and transporting comrades using
the safety of his car. Alley traveled widely
throughout China, gaining the experience that
made his working knowledge of the country
unique among foreigners. He then became
heavily involved in establishing the Industrial
Co-operative Movement (Indusco).
In 1942 Alley’s relations with the KMT gov-
ernment deteriorated, resulting in his dis-
missal from Indusco and in 1944 the school
he had established at Shuangshipu was relo-
cated 688 miles north-west to Shandan in
Gansu province, on the edge of Gobi desert
and not very close to anything else. However,
following the principles of his mentor, Joseph
Bailie, Alley encouraged the Shandan school
to grow through its tenets of ‘create and ana-
lyse’ and a daily routine of shared work and
study designed to install self-discipline, team-
work, and co-operation between industry
and agriculture.
Because of his progressive politics, the New
Zealand government used its propaganda
organs to divide public opinion in New Zea-
land regarding Alley’s activities, and from
1950 anti-communist rhetoric meant that
attitudes hardened towards him – especially
when he publicly identified himself with op-
position to American policy in the Korean
War and revealed American use of biological
warfare against Chinese and Korean civilians.
As the Cold War deepened, the man many
New Zealanders had admired, through such
widely publicised ventures as the shipment
of local sheep to China, was denied newspa-
LIVES OF NOTE
per coverage. Brady’s book reflects this Cold
War mentality, and cloaks behind a veneer
of scholarly apparatus the fact that there is no
evidence whatsoever that Alley engaged in
any inappropriate sexual activity at all.
During the period after China was liberated
Alley became increasingly immersed in writ-
ing about China, pamphleteering, writing and
translating poetry. Alley described his role as
‘interpreting China to the world’ and became
known internationally as he described Chi-
na’s developmental projects, the creative har-
nessing of the full potential of the Chinese
masses, and its peaceful diplomacy during
the building of socialism. It is clear from his
records and interviews with those close to
him that Alley believed in the revolutionary
project that he assisted through his work,
there was no gun to his head since there was
no need for one. He devoted his life to the
Chinese revolution because he supported it.
Alley undertook tours of New Zealand in
1960, 1965 and 1971 – in all he met with
hundreds of students and workers even
though the first two drew no coverage in the
capitalist media. In part this was because dur-
ing them he openly admitted his member-
ship of the New Zealand Communist Party.
Still, the tide was shifting and in 1972 Vic-
toria University of Wellington awarded him
an honorary doctorate in literature. The PRC
also granted him honorary citizenship, and
his residence there was a pilgrimage point
for thousands of visiting New Zealanders,
especially after diplomatic relations were es-
tablished in Dec 1972.
Although sometimes projected as a willing
propagandist for the Chinese party-state
(by the Right and the Ultra-left), Alley was
anything but, always criticising policies he
disagreed with, albeit in private. His role as
promoter of the Chinese revolution and the
anti-communist environment dominating the
English-speaking world for which he wrote
naturally tempered his ability to do so openly.
Yet his private papers reveal, like many oth-
ers of China’s foreign friends who joined the
Chinese revolution in the 1930s and 40s,
someone deeply skeptical of the market re-
forms now known as ‘socialism with Chinese
characteristics’.
On 27 December 1987 at Beijing, Rewi
Alley died. His handwritten will asked for
his ashes to be scattered over the Shandan
countryside - ‘please no special trip, just the
next time someone is going out there. It’s just
one more soldier passing on’. Ever humble
he completely undersold himself. Alley was
a genuine hero.
19
ABOUT STRUGGLE

Strive to Unite!
Ka Kohi Te Toe Ka Whai Te Marama Tanga
(through the sharing of knowledge, enlightenment will follow)
Struggle is published quarterly
representing the viewpoint of
the Organisation for Marxist
Unity. Struggle aims to provide
a Marxist analysis of class strug-
gle, politics and economy of
Aotearoa/New Zealand.
The immediate task is to
encourage working people and
all possible forces to unite in a
Patriotic and Democratic United
Front led by the working class
to remove the stranglehold of
foreign monopoly capitalists
and their local agents, by estab-
lishing a People’s Democratic
State System. This stage of the
advance to Socialism is deter-
mined by the objectively exist-
ing class contradictions, classes
and laws of social develop-
ment. The more comprehen-
sive the competition of this
stage, the more favourable will
be the situation for the further
advance to a socialist society.
Struggle emphasises the neces-
sity of studying the history of
class struggle in Aotearoa/New
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a party that develops its strat-
egy, tactics and methods cor-
responding to the needs of
the situation in Aotearoa/New
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a party free from doctrinaire
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influence of social democracy,
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20 March 2006 : STRUGGLE